


I won’t let you down

by Val_Teal



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: And Artemis gives it to him, Angst, Artemis Crock is a Good Sister, Artemis Crock-centric, Bruce Wayne is Bad at Feelings, Bruce Wayne is a Bad Parent, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Bruce is trying, Dick Grayson Gets a Hug, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Dick Grayson and Artemis Crock are Siblings, Dick Grayson is Robin, Dick Grayson-centric, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, He loves Dick, Hurt Dick Grayson, Hurt/Comfort, Once Artemis yells some sense into him, Paula might help, Sibling Love, but - Freeform, eventually, he does his best, not on purpose, they’re relationship is so underrated, you can’t convince me otherwise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 02:13:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29181588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Teal/pseuds/Val_Teal
Summary: When Robin and Batman have a fight Dick does something he’s never done before. He goes to Artemis instead of going to train or calling Wally. Artemis gets a new sibling, and she won’t abandon him like Jade abandon her.
Relationships: Artemis Crock & Dick Grayson
Comments: 11
Kudos: 86





	1. Glass Bird

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Yonder Window Breaks](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11824320) by [mizufallsfromkumo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizufallsfromkumo/pseuds/mizufallsfromkumo). 



Artemis understood what was happening when Dick Grayson climbed through her window in the middle of the night in a very familiar green hoodie and leather jacket. The hoodie still sported spots of flower from where he and Wally had tried to help M’gann make cookies that were only slightly less toxic than her originals. So when the strange freshman slipped quietly into her room, she schooled her features carefully (it did make sense didn’t it?) into a blank mask as she let him in with the words, “What are you doing here, Grayson?”

He moved across the room and sat down on the floor facing Artemis’s bed, leaning against Jade’s old one. “I just needed to get away, you know? Is it— is it okay if I crash here?” It was strange for her, seeing him like this, unsure and cautious. Not that he wasn’t usually careful, really he was careful in every move he made and every word he said, he had to be, but he was careful in a different way now. He was unsure, insecure in a way she hadn’t really thought the confident boy wonder could be. So she nodded and mirrored his position, leaning against her own bed on the floor.

When they spoke it was quite. Words like fog drifting between them in the silence of the night. “Was he mad?” She asked.

“Yeah,” the boy sighed. Artemis had never thought of him as a kid, he was experienced and mature and confident, but right now he looked his age. Thirteen and insecure. 

“We saved the prisoners,” she said softly. They had, maybe they hadn’t gotten intel, maybe the perpetrators had gotten away, but the had saved the people.

“He thinks it was short sighted,” Dick said, leaning his head back to stare at her pealing ceiling. “We saved the people there, but the rest of the ring is on guard now and we don’t have any new leads. It’s going to be that much harder now. And yeah we saved the people there, but the traffickers escaped to traffic again and the rest of the people who’ve been taken are still out there and we’re no closer to saving them.” She knew he was right of course, but. . . they’d done their best with the situation they had. And when it came to stopping the fleeing thugs or making sure the prisoners who had been shot got proper medical attention, well none of them had even thought about capturing and interrogating when someone else might be dying.

“You were focused on helping the people. Not beating on thugs for scraps of information. Batman might be the type out to punish the evil, but you’re doing this to protect the innocent. It’s a different way of being a hero, but it’s not bad and you shouldn’t be punished for it.” Artemis wasn’t used to comforting, or even saying anything that isn’t at least vaguely insulting, but he had come to her, had trusted her with parts of himself she had never seen before. She was determined not to let him down.

“I don’t know why it hurts. He’s just trying to help me save as many people as I can, be the best hero I can be.” His head fell, his bony knee caps pressed against his eyes causing them to throb dully. Artemis reached out a calloused hand and rested it on his shoulder, squeezing a bit to (hopefully) help ground him.

“It hurts because you look up to him. He’s your mentor, but he sees the job so differently from you that a success is a failure and a failure is a success. He wants to help you save as many people as possible, but not all the people you could possibly save. You feel like you did something right but he only sees something you did wrong. Dick, it’s okay not to see eye to eye with him. You’re not Batman’s sidekick the same way Wally is the flash’s or the way Kaldur is Aquaman’s. Robin doesn’t belong to Batman. Robin belongs to Dick Grayson and you can be any kind of hero you want to be.” Artemis wasn’t sure how well she was doing, but she tried to keep her voice firm and confident. Right now Dick needed confidence, needed surety and direction. She did her best to give it to him.

Dick, for his part, was not crying. His eyes were just watering from being pressed into his knees, honest. He made an affirmative noise that he hoped Artemis understood, but he didn’t move. He was a blown glass statuette of a little robin. A figurine perched precariously on a shelf and he knew that he would shatter with a touch. He had given Artemis to much of himself already. Had given her to much as soon as he climbed through her window. He didn’t need to give her anymore.

She didn’t know that. She wouldn’t have agreed even if she had. So, cautiously, she scooted across the floor and leaned against her sister’s old bed next to him. She was unsure for a moment, but then she wrapped her arms around him as gently as she could, not wanting to spook the boy.

The glass figurine shattered at the touch, and Dick was sobbing, ugly hiccuping sobs that wracked his body making him shudder in her arms. Things like this had happened before, he and Batman had disagreements that left them both in pain, but he had never reacted like this. He had never snuck out of the house, had never cried into another’s arms, had never understood why he felt the way he did. He had locked himself in his room, had trained his frustrations away or called Wally to distract him. But now there was someone he trusted that he could go to not far away, and he knew Artemis would understand, she was a gothamite after all. 

They moved onto Jade’s bed at some point after Dick’s sobs had slowed to pants and then hiccups. Artemis sat upright, her back against the wall, Dick’s head resting somewhere between her shoulder and her chest. He sat strangely next to her, his legs were curled under him, right next to her thighs, but his upper body rested across her. Her arms circled his back and his head was on the other side of her body than his legs, but it was comfortable. Artemis was reminded of how Jade had once held her, in this bed. How her big sister had comforted her when mom went to prison, when dad told her she’d failed him, when Jade herself had shouted at her. Her big sister had held her similarly to how she now held Dick, and Artemis hoped to any higher power that existed that she wouldn’t fail him like Jade had failed her.

Artemis woke the next morning to an aching back and a small body laying across her lap. She didn’t move, just groggily studied her teammate. She had never seen him look peaceful before, she realized. Happy, yes, but never peaceful. Always moving, always plotting, always thinking. But in sleep Dick Grayson was still. His breath came in small little puffs as his eyelids fluttered gently. His dark hair hanging loosely from his head, spilling softly onto the bed. His face was smooth, gone were his sharp grin and quick tongue, his thin mouth wasn’t twisted into a wide grin or a mischievous smirk. It wasn’t contorted with pain or rage or fear. It wasn’t carefully sculpted to reveal no secrets. In sleep he merely was, adrift in dreams, safe from the dangerous world he inhabited.

Artemis had never felt like this, had never felt that this person was her responsibility, and never felt the warmth in her chest that meant she would die for this person simply because she loved them, because they were better than her and it was her duty to keep them that way. Dick had somehow, in a single night, become one of the most important people in Artemis’s world. And she was terrified.


	2. Parents

When Artemis’s mother came in to wake her up she was shocked to find that not only was her daughter awake, but she was holding a boy in her arms. A boy who had most certainly not been there last night. Before Paula could do anything Artemis put a finger to her lips and gave her a soft ‘shhhh.’ The boy was still asleep. Paula noted that the boy was younger than her daughter by at least a year, probably two. 

Artemis shook the boy gently, waking him slowly, “hey, hey. Time to wake up, Boy Wonder,” and that explained who he was, Paula eased a bit. Robin could be trusted. She nodded to her daughter and slipped out of her room to make another plate of toast.

Dick woke slowly. He was warm and comfortable in a way he never was at the manor, with his big cold room and large empty bed. He thought maybe he was dreaming still, as his consciousness started drifting closer to reality. Someone was holding him, shaking him gently to wake fully and he thought for an instant that it was his mother, that he was at the circus and everything had just been a dream. But when he opened his eyes it was Artemis’s tan face smiling down at him, with her usually hard brown eyes soft and crusted from sleep, a kind smile playing on her lips where he would often see a scowl.

“Time to wake up. Are you feeling better?” She asked him, whispering. It took him another moment to orient himself, remember what had transpired in the night. He nodded, sitting up awkwardly as he realized he had been laying in her lap. “Good,” she said, her voice still a gentle whisper in the air, “my mom is probably fixing breakfast. We have training at the cave today, we could swing by your place and get your gear, or if you have spares at the cave we can zeta straight there.” 

Again Dick nodded, not sure quite what to say. Before last night he and Artemis hadn’t even been that close, now he had climbed through her window in the middle of the night, spilled his gut out to her, cried in her arms, and slept in her lap. He had no idea what one was supposed to say in this situation. But Artemis wasn’t saying anything, she was acting. . . normal. Like it wasn’t a big deal, like him being in her room in the morning was the most natural thing in the world. And— it was nice. So instead of apologizing he smiled at her gratefully and said, “if I can borrow a pair of sunglasses we can head straight to the cave.”

When the pair entered the kitchen Artemis’s mother wheeled over to them, offering her had to Dick, “hello, I’m Artemis’s mother, Paula.”

Dick shook her hand, his usual carefree smile back on his face and said, “Dick Grayson, it’s lovely to meet you.”

“I made another plate of toast, for you. I just put butter on it, but there’s jam in the fridge if you want it,” she said kindly, like having a random boy in her home was nothing to be concerned with. Dick didn’t mention it, just thanked her and ate his toast next to Artemis. It was comfortable, easy in a way breakfast with Bruce never was. There was no stilted conversation or awkward silence, just three people eating toast in comfortable silence.

Artemis and Dick left the apartment, making their way to the nearest zeta tube, a borrowed pair of glasses on Dick’s face. The weather was sleepy, the sky gray with a thin layer of clouds, the sun peeking through slightly. Dick didn’t think they would be getting any rain today, but he wasn’t an expert.

Artemis didn’t live in a nice neighborhood, but she didn’t live in Crime Alley either. Most of the buildings were in decent shape, there were small businesses that didn’t look at all like fronts. There were children up early, walking to friends houses or to favorite hangouts, who didn’t look twitchy or scared, though none walked alone. Dick thought this was probably one of the safer places in Gotham, where people weren’t filthy rich and great targets or starving and desperate. Of course it was no suburban paradise, and he picked out a couple people who were probably dealers, saw alleys littered with bottles and cigarette butts, and saw bullet holes in a few store fronts, but, well it was Gotham. He suddenly realized that his idea of safe would probably sound vaguely insane to a lot of people in the world.

Batman was waiting for him when they got to the mountain. Artemis entered the tube before Dick, she came out the other end still laughing at him (he had bowed and called her m’lady and she had gone in still clutching a stitch in her side) but sobered upon seeing the Batman. Now that she knew he was Bruce Wayne she saw him differently, she had grown up knowing him as that playboy everyone always talked about, had herd about all his escapades from a young age. In any other situation she would be in awe of the strategy, but right now all it did was make her bolder. Not because she thought he was like Brucie Wayne, but because she knew he had a face, and a name. Knew that he had reasons and responsibilities, especially to Dick.

So when Dick exited the Zeta tube ten seconds later, it wasn’t to a laughing Artemis and the cheerful group of teens he was expecting, but to the sight of Artemis glaring at Batman and the team standing at attention.


End file.
